


Just the Facts

by chameleonCharisma



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, High School, Post-Sburb/Sgrub, outside perspective
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-07
Updated: 2015-06-07
Packaged: 2018-04-03 07:06:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4091686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chameleonCharisma/pseuds/chameleonCharisma
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Today is the day you finally get the scoop on Dave Strider.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just the Facts

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place roughly a year after my other work 'Assignment "Crayon Friendship Monstrosity"'. It's certainly not necessary in order to read this. They both stand alone, but they take place in the same timeline regardless.

Your name is unimportant. Far more relevant is your title: Head Writer for the Houston Central Senior High School Newspaper. Your interests are many and varied, but you most enjoy combing the school for secrets, picking apart the mysteries of your fellows in the student body, and reporting on things in a timely and orderly fashion. You collect incriminating notes and photos, many of which you sell under the table to the yearbook staff if they aren’t claimed by their owners. Some would call you ruthless, and they would be entirely correct. You specialize in scuttlebutt and entirely legal reporterly trickery to get your scoops. Your biggest pet peeve is a potential scoop that – no matter how hot your leads, how top-tier your sources, nor how flawless your notations – remains an unsolvable puzzle. Today you have resolved to dig in your heels, don your entirely-to-student-code reporter hat, and hunker down for a day of reporterly steadfastness and artful cunning. Today is the day you finally get the scoop on Dave Strider.

Years in the past, though not many, you attended the same school as Dave Strider. He struck you as hopelessly dull and boring; the quintessential cool guy, with his “ironic” pointy shades, rapping, and obsession with swords, dead things, and shitty comics. Like, _really_ shitty comics. Wow. You chalked it up to too many dodge balls to the head due to misapplications of fetch modi in gym class. You lost track of him after that.

In the present day of your junior year of high school, you have a scoop on your hands nearly a year in the making: just what is Dave Strider’s deal, exactly? Because he was never this much of a total weirdo in middle school. Suitably entrenched in the back corner of the cafeteria, well away from the hustle and bustle of the student body, you decaptchalogue your handy reporterly notebook from the sylladex of your Reporterly Notebook Fetch Modus and consider the facts.

Fact the First:  
Dave Strider, despite being a hipster-slacker-douchebag, is never late for anything. Ever. He is, in fact, _so_ on time that it is a little bit eerie. You can literally set your watch by him, because as the bell rings, he will invariably walk through a door to wherever he needs to be. If Dave Strider is in your sights, you can take your time. If he is not, you are either early or late. It is deeply unsettling, because there are no clocks in any of the hallways and keen observation has shown that Dave Strider does not wear a watch, and his phone remains in his locker unless he is at lunch. Furthermore, Dave Strider always seems to know the correct time, and, in fact, once told the janitor exactly how many minutes and seconds the cafeteria clock was off (four and thirteen respectively), and asked if he would fix it, please, because it was “kind of weirding [him] out”. You still aren’t sure what to make of that.

Fact the Second:  
Dave Strider has an uncanny knowledge of the inner workings of the stock market. The ups and downs, when to buy and sell, what exact twists and turns of certain events will affect the outcomes of a certain market at a given point in time, and when to stop playing. You know this because you share a math class this year, and when the teacher ran a mock stock exchange for you all to practice statistics, Dave Strider came out on top as a fucking millionaire at the end of the week, whereas many a boom and bust was had by the rest of you. He mentioned offhand that he would have been “a trillionaire five times over” had he engaged in any “shenanigans”. He then proceeded to craft an (entirely incomprehensible) explanatory diagram involving crocodiles, onions and “boondollars”, and you aren’t quite sure what to make of that, either.

Fact the Third:  
Dave Strider has the most bizarre fashion sense known to man. You don’t know why anyone would ever wear that much red. Or that many different suits. Or suits at all, really. Especially since Dave Strider’s fashion choices prior to high school, to the best of your knowledge, consisted of a single pair of jeans and as many “ironic” t-shirts as he could get his hipster hands on. At least he has swapped out the pointy shades for marginally less (or maybe more; you aren’t really sure) douchey aviators. He adamantly (if quietly and monotonously) refuses to remove said aviators, and the administrative faculty seems disinclined to bother about them. He could very likely be hiding a defect of some sort (to quote one of your sources, Dave Strider is “one pale-ass motherfucker”), but you find yourself more focused on the fact that there is no discernible pattern to his dress sense. He showed up in jeans and a worn red baseball tee with a broken record on the front for photo day, and then showed up the following day looking like James-goddamned-Bond. Words, quite frankly, fail you. There is so much you aren’t sure what to make of, you are un-making things happen. (You paused here to jot a note-to-self that you will never forgive Dave Strider for his fucking shitty webcomic.)

On the topic of shitty comics;  
Fact the Fourth:  
Dave Strider is not, in fact, as shitty of an artist as he “ironically” makes himself out to be when he actually deigns to use his _dominant hand_. You have somehow shared an art class since you started high school (since you need to man the comics section on occasion), and the sheer sliding scale of relative shit of his work is honestly astounding. And equally honestly unsettling. You don’t take psychology until next semester, but you are pretty sure Dave Strider is either incredibly disturbed, or some kind of mad artistic genius – quite possibly both – because you would never be able to explain it otherwise. His sketchbooks are filled with, naturally, shitty comics; but some pages are vastly different from the typical Dave Strider experience. There are a lot of crows. There are hulking monsters, pool balls arranged in strange patterns, and, oddly, a lot of astrology. There are people: sketchy, angular figures all in grey with bright “candy corn” horns; beetle-y black and white creatures wrapped in layers of cloth; children in strange, flowing outfits with oddly-shaped weapons. There are also a lot of dragons. Most striking are the strange, otherworldly landscapes; whole planets of oil and volcanoes and machinery (and also brains in one case? Which you figured was another check in the disturbed column).

Even Dave Strider’s actual assignments are an enigma. Many are simply more detailed fare from his sketches, but some are downright strange. One in particular that stood out was the final project for last year; assignment “fear”. Dave Strider spent two solid weeks of art and lunch and after-school periods on a step ladder at the back of the art room, concocting a sprawling mural in chalk on the wall. The resulting image was… odd. A hulking green skeleton in a rainbow-coloured coat, some kind of winged wolf wreathed in green fire and red rope, and dozens of broken and bleeding figures in the background. You had wondered idly if he wasn’t deathly afraid of complimentary colours and tried to embody them somehow. Odder still: upon completion, Dave Strider had snapped a photo for posterity, gotten his mark, and had immediately proceeded to grab a bucket of water and scrub the chalk mural from the wall with quick, jerky movements. If you didn’t know any better, you would say that he was actually frightened; but what could possibly be scary about a picture of a green skeleton, of all things? When you had asked, he had said, as if quoting someone else, “he is already here”, and then chuckled a little wildly, before going back to his cleaning. You are pretty sure Dave Strider is touched in the head.

But on the topic of chalk;  
Fact the Fifth:  
Dave Strider carries chalk around with him _everywhere_. He will use it to illustrate particularly ironic points on tables and desks. He once spent most of a lunch hour last year commandeering tables and stealing all the salt and pepper shakers and ketchup bottles in the cafeteria, and made some sort of urban center mock-up with streets and parks. It was subsequently dubbed “Caf Town” and remained an interactive lunchtime project for almost two weeks before someone finally got around to wiping down the tables and put all the condiments back. Every few weeks, to this day, the various bottles and containers find their way back to chalky streets and venues before the cycle repeats itself. Any condiment actually used for its intended purpose is obediently returned to its “proper” location “in town” by some unspoken rule. It isn’t even just Dave Strider anymore; there is actually a (completely unregulated and therefore unofficial) Caf Town Upkeep Club. And Dave Strider _isn’t even in the damn thing_.

(You take a moment to look up from your notes to glare at the construct in question. It takes up three full cafeteria tables and several scavenged desks. You are pretty sure the library books that make up the “Town Hall” are cycled out, dutifully borrowed and returned with every new upheaval. It is maddeningly stupid, but oddly awe-inspiring, in a thoroughly asinine way.)

Studying your notes, you consider that with just these facts, Dave Strider would seem merely strange and off-beat; for all the world just an odd boy with odder habits and a fondness for making a nuisance of himself. If it were just these facts, you might consider that maybe he was just weird, if a little more so than you had thought in middle school. Or unstable. Or just quiet (though with his penchant for mumbling monologues and incessant rapping, he could also be anti-social, and his people-watching just more ironic bullshit).

_But._

There are some MAJOR FACTS (capitalized just like in your notes) that take Dave Strider from weird in a normal-teenage-way to _incredibly suspicious_ , and they are what first made you sit up and take notice of him and his habits and his frankly bizarre behaviour.

What got you watching this Dave Strider douchebag in the first place were _certain events_ during the beginning of September in your mutual first year. It was the time of year where all the middle school bullies are getting a feel for the place, testing the waters and forming new packs and cliques. You yourself kept dutifully out of the way. Dave Strider, with his ever-present aviators and gangly limbs and general paleness of person, became an easy target, especially once it became clear that he could not keep his mouth shut. What _should_ have happened was that he got the shit kicked out of him to serve as an example for all those who would come after. What _actually_ happened has gone down in school history.

After taking several pointed comments very badly (though you doubt Dave Strider had meant said comments to be taken any other way) two hulking jocks had penned him in against the lockers and set about cracking their knuckles and being all manner of grim and threatening. One of them had said (quote) “What are you gonna do now, Palebro?” and Dave Strider had choked out a surprised laugh, responding smartly (also quote) “I wouldn’t go pale for you for a boonmint.” This utterly nonsensical smart-mouthing had encouraged said jocks to skip right to inflicting violences upon Dave Strider’s person, and they had lunged. Dave Strider had simply raised a hand with a “Nah”, and he was suddenly just sort of not there, and the jocks had smashed into the lockers more or less head first, and everyone else’s heads had snapped to the door in time to see Dave Strider waving lazily as he walked away. No one had even seen him move.

Later that same week, Dave Strider had cemented his status as terrifying and untouchable after three things were observed in his gym class in quick succession. First: according to some sources in the locker room, Dave Strider was not, in fact, a gangly nerd; while thin, he was roped with lean muscle. Furthermore, he had an abundance of what appeared to be honest-to-god _battle scars_. Second: he had displayed frankly inhuman speed and flexibility on the dodge ball court. He was the last man standing and did not even break a sweat, regardless of the fact that several people had been gunning for him for the entire duration of the game.

The third observation happened afterwards in the hallway, when one of the jocks from the locker incident had grabbed Dave Strider rather viciously around the neck from behind in order to get the drop on him. Taking the first and second observations into consideration, no one at all was surprised when Dave Strider had broken the hold, whirled around, and spin-kicked the jock right in the side of the head, all in one smooth movement. He had ended the spin in a crouch, back to the wall, hands at his belt as if to draw a weapon. It was graceful, brutal, and effective. Everyone had decided that Dave Strider was either ex-military or a ninja, and no one except recruiting sports teams had ever gotten in his way again. And that was really when you started looking into things; hoping, maybe, for some sort of ninja training exposé. But when you actually started watching, more and more things stood out as decidedly out of the ordinary.

Dave Strider stands… _wrong_ somehow. He _moves_ wrong. It is not immediately noticeable, and were it not for your heightened and honed reporter senses and your budding suspicions, you doubt you would have noticed it at all. But it's there. Not so much when he is around other people socializing, and is clearly conscious of his cool guy status; when he is aware that there are eyes on him and he needs to move in a certain way. In these situations there is a habitual, well-practiced grace to his movements. Dave Strider maintains a cool, ironic backwards slouch which transfers over into his lazy, got-nowhere-to-be gait; he seems completely at-ease.

But when Dave Strider is not quite paying attention, when his mind is markedly elsewhere, such as when he sits alone at lunch or in art class, everything changes. His posture becomes somehow sharp and angular, almost predatory. No one can ever tell because of his dark glasses, but it seems as though he is constantly watching people. When Dave Strider is annoyed with something or someone, he grits his teeth in a grimace, but it always looks to you like an animal bearing its fangs, lips pulled back in a snarl. When he gets defensive (you don’t think anyone has actually seen him angry), he cants his head forward (at first you thought it was to look over his ridiculous sunglasses), and on anyone else the gesture would be evasive and meek. But he is assuredly not bowing; the way he angles himself looks defiant and threatening, like he is about to lunge forward and head butt whomever he is talking to. Sometimes when he is particularly irritated with an art project you can hear him make a hissing sound in his throat and between his teeth, and it jangles up your spine in some kind of hindbrain fear-response.

Dave Strider uses weird words sometimes, and everyone just assumes (likely rightly so), that he is being purposefully obtuse to confuse everyone, or that he is referencing an in-joke for (again) the sake of being obtuse (or ironic). You aren’t sure what is so “highfalutin” about words like “refrigerator” or “bath tub”, or why anyone should “get down off [their] high 'hoofbeast'” about it. You are pretty sure “going shithive maggots” has never been a thing, and you don’t know what “shoutpoles” are, but Dave Strider thinks the football coach needs to use fewer of them during gym drills. Everyone mostly chalks it up to Dave Strider just being kind of an asshole.

But sometimes he seems to catch himself and his expression becomes oddly fixed, more than usual, as if he is remembering something physically painful. During your law unit in social studies, he once used some bizarrely violent-sounding word to refer to lawyers, and he froze, almost imperceptibly, before laughing it off. You are pretty sure he didn’t say a word for the rest of the day, which was disquieting in and of itself.

Honestly, you were almost going to give up on the story (which you have never ever done before, you have reporterly grit and integrity to consider, dammit) once you made the discovery (with many sources cited) that Dave Strider has probably never held a serious conversation with anyone. Even though Dave Strider has been here for more than a year, even though he tends to surround himself with people, cracking jokes and “dropping mad raps”, he doesn’t seem to have any close friends, preferring the comfort of his iPhone. In fact, he only ever looks truly relaxed (and not just “cool”) when he is messaging people (friends in other states, he admitted to a classmate once) over Pesterchum. He never joined any clubs, even though all of the teams are fairly desperate to get their hands on him after those _certain events_ , and he even seems content to watch Caf Town grow from the sidelines now that it has others to tend it. You had a brief moment of conscience (a rarity in your field, to be sure) and had decided that, ninja reflexes aside, you were perhaps reading too much into what could just be a lonely, sincerely troubled boy.

But that was before your _final point_. (You here flip to the final page in your notebook with as much dramatic reporterly flair as you can muster.)

What has really put you back on Dave Strider’s trail these past couple weeks: more than the weird clothes and weirder words and bizarre art installations; more than the inhuman predator-ninja reflexes and the eerily exact sense of numbers and timing; more than all the disturbing behavioural nonsense; is his reaction to what may potentially be an _impending alien invasion_.

There have been reports in the paper and on the news for weeks now, and the online communities are blowing up. There have been garbled messages and sounds and images broadcast across multiple frequencies. Astronomers are confirming that something is, indeed, heading Earth’s way. Something big. People aren’t sure if they believe it, or are frightened of it, or if the government is doing its damnedest to pull some kind of Independence Day ploy for world peace. There has been a gigantic upswing in the popularity of alien invasion media. People are counting the days until the human race is either admitted to the greater cosmos or exterminated.

And Dave Strider is _not fazed in the slightest_.

In fact, he looks positively _smug_. As if he knows something that the rest of you do not.

And after all of the sneaking (and running) around you have been doing trying to pin him down to ask some very pointed questions, it is (reporterly propriety be damned) _pissing you off_. Dave Strider is a suspicious weirdo, and for the love of all that is good and holy you are going to get a story out of it if it _kills you_. (And with his penchant for flash-stepping and up-and-disappearing when you or the sports teams try and corner him on the roof, it just might.) Also, with the potential end-of-humanity-via-alien-death-ray on the horizon, you figure you really have nothing to lose.

As the bell rings to signal the end of the period, you glance up at the cafeteria clock and start counting. Exactly six minutes and twelve seconds later, Dave Strider slouches gracefully into view. It normally takes him less time to get here from his previous class, (four minutes, thirteen seconds) but for the past week his behaviour has changed. You aren’t sure why, and it is bothering you, because all of Dave Strider’s actions are very likely precisely calculated.

Goddammit, he looks even more insufferably smug than usual.

As you start to jump up out of your chair (whether to interrogate him as is your due, or to backhand that smirk off his face, you aren’t sure), the PA system crackles to life, informing all students and staff to head to the gym immediately for a mandatory school assembly. The students milling about burst into frantic whispers. Dave Strider is smirking and appears to have a skip in his step. The bastard.

There is a huge projector screen set up as everyone files into the gym, and you notice all the teachers are wringing their hands and shifting foot to foot. Everyone looks too tense, all nervous smiles and shaky laughter. You spot Dave Strider in the crowd and make a b-line towards him, both to keep an eye on him and to better observe what you are pretty sure is about to happen.

The projector has been hooked up and tuned in to a local news channel. There is a live feed from Washington, DC. It is raining and there are more reporters than you have ever seen set up on the lawn. You are pretty sure that those people in uniform holding members of the public back behind the barrier are military.

 _And all of a sudden there is an ominous rumbling noise and a gigantic red_ spaceship _is breaching the clouds, slowly descending, and gracefully touching down_.

There are screams and cheers around you, and you actually forget to observe Dave Strider because you are too busy watching history happen.

Everything is dead silent as the ship looms above the crowd. The on-scene reporters are too stunned to comment (and regardless of your principles, you really can’t blame them). Your finely honed reporter mind is racing with the implications as you consider that there had to have been some kind of advance message for the nation’s capital to call a country-wide (likely world-wide) news broadcast at the exact time of landing. (You try and shove the memory of Dave Strider’s knowing smirk to the back of your mind. There is _no way_.)

Suddenly a large hatch on the ship hisses open, and there are screams from the crowd. The assembled reporters start up in earnest. You are barely able to hear them over the screams of your assembled schoolmates.

Shadowy shapes line the entrance, and the reporters are fumbling their deliveries as the occupants start to emerge, and now you can see the grey, (candy corn) horned, surprisingly humanoid figures that come walking out onto the grass (sharp and angular, predatory, moving in an entirely too-familiar way; you shudder, hot and cold and breaking out in gooseflesh as you remember Dave Strider’s sketch book), dressed by and large in what may actually be jeans and t-shirts (but that would be silly), except for one (possibly female?) in swim goggles and a flowing dress that makes her look sort of like a mermaid.

A short alien ( _alien!_ ) with nubby horns approaches the crowd and people start to bolt, and you certainly never thought someone rolling their eyes would be a universal constant. (Reporters are also bolting and distantly you scold them for their lack of reporterly integrity and dedication the scoop.) The alien reaches to grab a megaphone that’s been tossed down by a fleeing official. It (he?) prods at the button, flinches right along with the rest of the crowd at the resulting screech of feedback, before holding it to his mouth. The world holds its breath. The first words alien kind speaks to man are a rough, buzzing ( _English_ ) “So we come in peace, or some shit. That’s what we’re supposed to say to you fuckers, right?”

In the instant before the yelling starts, you are _pretty sure_ the laughter you hear is Dave Strider’s.

As the gymnasium erupts around you, you glance in Dave Strider’s direction and stop cold. He is crying. He has an enormous grin on his face, perhaps the most honest smile you have ever seen him wear, and _tears are streaming down his cheeks_. On screen, the mermaid-alien is elbowing the nubby-horned-alien out of the way, grumbling “I’m the Empress, let _me_ do the glubbing talking”, and Dave Strider laughs – chokes, really – and pulls off his shades to wipe his eyes. You vaguely register the fact that his irises are a vivid red, but you are far more focused on the fact that this is not an expression of spell-bound wonder on his face (you would know; you have schooled yourself for _hours_ in the reading of microexpressions), but one of _recognition_ ; like he has been reunited with a long lost friend. Which is _impossible_. (But he moves wrong and speaks wrong and there are dozens of pictures in the art room that you really do not want to think about.) The broadcast drones on, but you don't quite hear it.

Classes, naturally, let out early.

The entire school (likely the whole world) is in an uproar. As you begin your trek home, you start planning the layout for the article you will assuredly have to write, feeling eager to put pen to paper for the sake of the front page. And then you see Dave Strider ahead of you. His typical lazy gait is nowhere in evidence; there is a decided sense purpose in his steps. Never one to waste a perfect opportunity, you take a breath to yell, but he suddenly raises his hand. He is waving at someone on the street corner up ahead: a girl about your age in large, round glasses, with wild black hair and a long skirt. Next to her is a positively massive white dog that scares the absolute shit out of you for reasons you cannot adequately describe.

Dave Strider is smiling, is positively _beaming_. The girl holds out her hand and he takes it, and the dog barks, and all three of them are suddenly _gone_ in a flash of green light. There is actually a loud noise as air rushes back in to fill the place they were standing.

Your (decidedly un-reporterly) crazy-shit-o-meter has long since exploded after today’s events, so as shocked as you are, you cannot manage much more than dropping your bag and raising your eyebrows. You are decidedly done for the day. You really aren’t sure what to make of this, but you almost don’t even want the fucking ninja exposé anymore. Almost.

When the world summit meeting is held a week later, with many a foreign leader and dignitary in attendance to meet with the trolls of Alternia (which sounds hilariously like bad fanfiction), every single news channel in the country is broadcasting live. Things are progressing well. And then a bunch of kids break from the gathered crowd during the Alternian ambassador’s speech and rush the stage, screaming and laughing, right before something wipes out the camera feed on every channel. Sitting there, watching the “technical difficulties” screen, you find that you are _not at all surprised_ to have noticed a pale, gangly boy in aviators and a red baseball tee running at the head of the pack.

**Author's Note:**

> I got some lovely comments on my other story, so I've been looking forward to posting this. I've been editing and re-editing it for for a while now, so I hope it comes across well. In the piece I did about Dave in art class, he really hasn't acclimatized to the real world yet. This is my take on what Dave's general behaviour after he's a bit more back to his old self might look like to someone from the outside, someone who has no idea what to make of anything he does.  
> I do have some ideas for the other kids, so I'll see what else I can post here if people are interested.
> 
> Also, anyone wishing to draw their own version of the "Crayon Friendship Monstrosity" is very welcome to do so!


End file.
